It’s been about one month since the new council started, and a lot has happened. We are committed to transparency, so we are pulling back the curtain with some good news, some difficult news, and some major announcements.

Background

For the past two years, the structure of the NEM Foundation was a first-of-its-kind attempt to running a decentralized promotional organization in different regions around the world. The Foundation was trusted with making decisions for the NEM public chain and spreading its global adoption. In 2018, the Foundation tested the concept of decentralized regional leadership, allowing each region a great deal of freedom in how they operated as long as they were promoting NEM.

When the new council arrived on January 1, 2019, we opened the books and saw the results of 2018. We saw a lot of talented people who were working hard, but not aligned with the same goals. We saw efforts being duplicated, and inconsistent metrics of success. We saw very little accountability for funds and questionable ROI, leading to a burn rate of 9 million XEM per month. In terms of running an effective organization, the existing structure failed. Maybe that didn’t seem like a big problem when the XEM price was high, but it’s a very big problem as we seek to sustain a viable organization in the ‘Crypto Winter.’

Reality

The XEM exchange rate has suffered catastrophic drops from this time a year ago, just as many other ambitious cryptocurrency projects have suffered, now the NEM Foundation is facing challenging budget decisions. We are in a tough spot like many others in this space. It is our duty to act quickly to ensure the longevity of the NEM Foundation ecosystem and development.

Good news

It’s clear to the council that we need to make swift changes from an operational standpoint in the interest of NEM users, employees, developers, and partners. The council has been meeting multiple times per week since December (we convened before we were even official) and working around the clock across seven time zones to come to an agreement and do the right thing.

So here’s where we currently stand. We have completely rebuilt the NEM.io Foundation’s operating structure and mission. We are hitting refresh and starting from scratch. This means a new focus under this new leadership and a NEM Foundation that truly exists to serve and support its powerful community.

The way we will do this is by transitioning from a promotional-focused organization to a product-focused organization.

New reality

The NEM Foundation has restructured to eliminate regional teams and replace them with newly created product-focused teams. All Foundation employees and contractors will now report to one of the seven product teams. The heads of these teams are Chief Technology Officer, Chief of Product Management, Chief Financial Officer, Chief Business Development Officer, Chief Operations Officer, Chief Marketing Officer, and Chief Revenue Officer.

Each of these team’s leads will be responsible for reporting metrics and delivering ROI directly to the council and community to maintain transparency and accountability. All funds spent will flow through the head of finance and adhere to consistent accounting standards. The council will be focused on oversight and will not be directly involved in operations.

Major Announcement

In our new proposal, we are greatly reducing promotional spending and we are adding an aggressive set of goals for tech product features, developer tools, and programmers that will help make the NEM platform the best in the industry. We are also adding plans to be sustainable.

We are proposing a budget with a burn rate reduced by about 60% from its previous level. This will allow the Foundation to deliver ambitious results with responsible use of reserves. This budget is not yet confirmed, and there are more steps ahead before we have the funding needed for these plans.

The reality of having one month left in funding means we won’t be able to support our current headcount, partnerships, and projects. We need to put everything on hold. This is painful since it hurts good people and partners, but the new council is aligned that we need to be transparent with what is happening behind the scenes of the NEM Foundation.

There are a lot more questions to answer, and we will share more information about all these announcements as soon as we can. But we felt the community should hear this news. We want you to understand the serious situation the NEM Foundation – not the NEM platform – faces and the drastic changes we are making and why we’re making them.

Good news

Now the good part. We can solve this. In the face of this bad news, there are amazing possibilities. NEM’s technology is still among the best for developers looking to build business applications, and our new focus is going to push us even further ahead in the industry. Our new features will unlock uses, ready in months, that partners have been asking for for years. Our partnerships and business development efforts will now have full transparency and ROI reporting. Our teams will be aligned on goals. Our Finance and Product Development teams will have plans on exactly how to maximize the benefits of the next bull market.

Positive changes are happening so fast, we have never seen anything like this before. So we hope you’ll take away confidence and excitement for these improvements and the great things the NEM Foundation can do in partnership with you, our community. Because more than ever, the community owns NEM. And above all, we are trying to uphold the trust placed in us and do the right thing for the community.

Message to the community and staff

A message to the community, you are the bedrock and stronghold to the NEM blockchain platform. With the new council, the last thing in our minds is to let you down and the first thing in our hearts is to ensure that we focus on Catapult, sustainability, and NEM Foundation governance reform.

A message to the hardworking staff and loyal team members, words cannot describe the difficult decisions we had to make to come to this point. We are only one month old as the new council, and to face the facts of where we stand is horrific. We cannot apologize for the past decisions before we came into leadership, but we want to let you know that there is hope for the future.

Final message

We are optimistic about the future of the NEM Foundation under its new council. With a laser-focus on our mission-critical goals, we are positioned to remain an industry leader through this ‘Crypto Winter.’ The upcoming launch of Catapult will revolutionize blockchain’s future, and we are grateful for your support in the next steps of this journey. Expect to see us rise from the dust of this Crypto Winter and have a laser focus on our mission-critical goal which is the launch and commercialization of Catapult, our latest technology update that will revolutionize blockchain’s future.

Three things to expect:

Expect to see more enterprise adoption utilizing Catapult.

Expect to see more public and private chain transactions when Catapult launches

Expect to see stronger leadership, solid governance and more service to the community, partners and the world as we hope for a brighter future.

We know the community has high expectations, we will work our best to meet these expectations to the best of our abilities.

We have one final message for all. The NEM Foundation you knew before is gone. The new proposal will clearly outline a significantly new approach and mission. We exist to serve and support the community responsibly.

Alex, I know this has been a real tumultuous time, for you especially. Thank you for the update. Community, I see firsthand how hard Alex works for the NEM ecosystem and how she has faced and wrestled with one unpleasant surprise after another. I am confident that she will provide the leadership to help the NEM project survive Crypto Winter. The re-organization she has described is a big step towards that, so I hope people will give her some time and patience to direct us out of this mess.

So is there going to be an election vote on these new positions? Not meaning to offend anyone but the current council members were voted for based on the positions they specified in their council manifesto, if the community knew there would be CMO CTO and CPO etc positions around I think they might have voted differently.

Alex, I know this has been a real tumultuous time, for you especially. Thank you for the update. Community, I see firsthand how hard Alex works for the NEM ecosystem and how she has faced and wrestled with one unpleasant surprise after another. I am confident that she will provide the leadership to help the NEM project survive Crypto Winter. The re-organization she has described is a big step towards that, so I hope people will give her some time and patience to direct us out of this mess.

Thank you for the encouragement, this is part of a joint effort by the council led by Alex who has gone over and beyond in her commitment to the role as President.

Dan_V:

So is there going to be an election vote on these new positions? Not meaning to offend anyone but the current council members were voted for based on the positions they specified in their council manifesto, if the community knew there would be CMO CTO and CPO etc positions around I think they might have voted differently.

This will be brought up in due time as we go through the phases of the proposal. Nothing is final and certain at the present moment. Thanks for asking @Dan_V

NEMquisitor:

So if there was only 1 month of money left for the entire foundation how does a 60% reduction in budget help? Does the foundation now have only 2 months? What can be accomplished in that time?

We are stretching as far as we can, there will be a request proposal to pursue further funding in due time.

jleony:

So sad, people were using the fund, for personal enjoyment and profit without regards to the project’s success.

We would like to note that there are many hardworking and genuine team members who have a strong work ethic, we will continue to do our best to ensure that with the new structure, there will be a solid sustainability model to avoid a situation like this.

tongokongo:

Who would have thought…

We are working our very best to manage this situation even as we are just one month into the council. Do bear with us as we continue to press on in doing our best!

GodTanu:

Organizational challenges and catapult road maps are separate.

Please do not affect the announcement of catapult road map.
Please announce the catapult road map as planned.

Our big priority will be in working on the launch and commercialization of Catapult. The roadmap is very important to us and we will work with the contributors of Catapult to ensure that the work in progress is communicated with clarity.

memario:

How is this just a sidenote ? Could you elaborate on that ? The funds can’t possibly be empty and if they are, how is a cut by 60% going to help ?

This has been due to the downward spiral of the cryptocurrency market capitalisation along with other factors. The cut by 60% will help us in stretching further as a proposal is requested for further funding.

cryptonit:

thx alex

expected status

and its proven now u are the right one
by direct address the shortcommings and work on solutions

Thank you, we are all working as team with the community to get through to this together.

I am around for approx. 1,5 year. When I joined, there were tales everywhere about Catapult being released & sh** soon. It promised highest TPS seen at that moment.

UPDATES
I am still here after 1.5 years hearing about NEM Foundation being bankrupt & still NOTHING about Catapult (I expect replies like: "Ohh… It is running on private chain… blah… blah). Catapult is deployed on private chain? What have regular users from that? Nothing. In 1.5 years, I have seen NO movement and heard nothing good about the partnerships using the private version.

PROJECTS & FUNDING
This is the section where I am pissed the most. If you enter the Project Proposals on this forum, you see a lot of garbage being approved (No, I am not kidding),
Let´s see:

CoderSchool funding - Like what the fu**? You don´t have to teach people how to build apps on NEM. First of all, you must have delivered your promises. Why would someone learn to code on existing platform when CATAPULT is supposed to rewrite whole source to C? Second of all, people should be learning programming on the platform themselves. Trust me, when you deliver a stable, high-quality platform (which was promised) developers will come and will be begging to use your platform. Why do developers use for example C or Java? Because the inventors paid someone more than 200K to host 5 Community Ventures and make some lectures? Don´t be silly. More than 200K wasted.

Xarcade.io (my “favourite”) - After a year they have delivered s***. Nothing delivered, no normal announcemets. BETA apk download on the website? What about using Google Play huh?

World’s First Decentralized Indoor Farm - Like what the fu**? Won´t even comment on this one.
…
x) This community funding BS shouldn´t have even existed. They brought NO value to the NEM ecosystem. Even if they did… where are the news? (I´ll move to this later)

COMMUNICATION (“Everything important is written on Telegram.” You have already lost here.)
Who uses Telegram ffs? (Okay, maybe many people, but trust me, very small fraction of the NEM Community). Your Telegram channel isn´t visible until you have registered and many people don´t like long registration (and even giving away your number). Maybe there were some news… but majority hasn´t seen them 4 sure. Have you seen how does your Reddit look like? I cry when I see the state of the NEM Subreddit. Spam, garbage posts… Are mods doing at least something there? The Subreddit IS LINKED on Coinmarketcap, NOT Telegram. I wouldn´t be registering on a platform requesting my Phone Number + Nobody I know is using that platform… NEM Foundation Updates? Why there aren´t any links pinned on Reddit or Facebook? If you use only own Forum and Telegram, don´t expect anybody to know anything about NEM.

SUMMARY
This is only a fraction of things that pissed me off last 1.5 years. There is definitely something wrong and these things I pointed out are easily fixable.

BTW do you know why I came here? I heard about it on REDDIT since it is easily accessible. The post was talking about Community Funding Request of 160mil XEM. Here isn´t written anything about it? Where should I be looking for it? Telegram? Coindesk? What about posting it on multiple platforms, since from my standing I am unable to know sh** about this project.

You shouldn´t be expecting us to be looking for info everywhere and spending half of our lives to access it. Use multiple platforms, like I said… Twitter & Reddit is on CMC, not Telegram.

This has been due to the downward spiral of the cryptocurrency market capitalisation along with other factors. The cut by 60% will help us in stretching further as a proposal is requested for further funding.

I am aware of the projects you are talking about, and many more. you’re right there are some sh** proposals. They don’t get funded though, including the ones you mentioned. Even some that did get funded by the community had the funding cut because they weren’t giving results. Travelbybit is a recent example.

There is a point there for the cynic though for sure. An anonymous quote on the NCF, “Paying people to give money away, that’s just not my idea of capitalism”

Still, if NEM Ventures hit it big on one project, everyone will love the fund and then we’ll enter irrational exuberance again. It is what it is, investing in high-tech startups you will lose almost every time. I still think it makes sense to have a well-managed fund that prioritizes developing the ecosystem along with making money.